Double floral: is it allowed?

Way back in the day when I was a wee slip of a fashion girl, I worked for Laura Ashley, where for a while I was assistant to the print selector for the UK market and we picked out which prints went into the garments in the UK Laura Ashley shops. I was reminded of this job when visiting the Boden print room last week and I had a wave of nostalgia for the days when we used to spend hours contemplating hundreds of floral prints. It was a fab job and my boss taught me a huge amount about how to appreciate a good floral from a bad- even today I can’t buy anything printed that is badly drawn, has mismatched screens or is poorly produced.

It also taught me that I am prone to fall head-over-heels in love with a floral, needing to instantly buy something in it, only to get sick to death of it within six months. Consequently I have learnt not to buy floral curtains/carpets/wallpaper or anything expensively permanent, as I know I’ll go off it fast and want to replace it with the next floral-crush. In fact I hardly ever buy florals now, I just ‘love’ from afar, it’s safer that way.

However, I have fallen hard for two shirts in the last year, one vintage large multi-floral (mid 60s M&S) that I bought in Crystal Palace Vintage emporium last year, for £20 and another this week from Zara, in a floral/fruit combo at £29.99. Both are printed on thickish rayon and are in similar muted orange/green/tobacco colourways. As I hung the new Zara one up I realised it looked rather fab next to the vintage one. It’s simple scooped neck shape looks good styled underneath the M&S shirt style, hmmm, I could layer one over the other I mused.

But two florals together…….double denim is a fashion no-no, so what about double florals? Fab or floral overload? I can’t decide…..what do we think ladies?

It depends what you wear on your bottom half… if you team it with dark skinny jeans and some camel coloured leather booties and minimal accessories, I think youi’d look quite old-school/flung together/original. But if you wear it with a flowy skirt or black pants or flat shoes, you’re going to look like the Oxford librarian that time forgot.
;)